Core Insight
Is this an ugly apple or a work of art? My first thought when I saw it hanging on the branch was that it looked deformed. It is the kind of apple that would get rejected on an assembly line long before it ever reached a grocery store shelf.
But the longer I looked at the picture, the more I leaned the other way. I left this tree up to nature, and the ecosystem mottled the skin with the blemishes you see. Is that undesirable, or does it actually look kind of cool? I think it is in the eye of the beholder.
It made me wonder if we try to sterilize the work we do. We want every result to look the same, polished and predictable, and we do not always let the work take a shape that has its own character or beauty.
The beauty of things that come out naturally is that they will not all look the same. When I let someone on my team discover a new way of doing something, different from the way I would have done it, the result might be a work of art I never would have found on my own.
Three Concrete Details to Notice
1. My first reaction was the assembly line
I judged this apple by the standard of a grocery store bin before I really looked at it. Those standards exist for good reasons, but they are not the only way to see something. At work, my first reaction to a result that looks different is often to measure it against how I expected it to look.
2. The blemishes came from the ecosystem
I don’t think anything went wrong with this apple. The marks on its skin came from the place it grew. A lot of the differences I see in people’s work come from somewhere similar: their own experience, strengths, and way of thinking.
3. Different is not the same as defective
An apple that does not match the others can still be good, and it may be more interesting to look at. When someone on my team finds a new way to get the job done, I want to ask whether it works and what it adds before I decide whether it fits the mold.
Simple Closing Thought
The next time you look at an apple, will you see a defect or a work of art?
And the next time someone on your team does the work differently than you would have, it might be worth asking the same question.
Keep growing. Keep learning.
Farmer Tommy
This post first appeared on October 16, 2026 in Sowing Success, my weekly LinkedIn newsletter on leadership and organic farming. Read the original on LinkedIn.
